Need advice regarding GD

Stratics Veteran

While looking for the (almost) perfect GD of my dreams I'm trying to upgrade from the one I have at the moment.

One thing I know is that I won't compromise on the resists, but when I have to choose between 2 good GD, one with good stats and average skills and the other with average stats and good skills, which one is the best choice ?

And which are the min I should accept ?
I mean, if for example I find a GD with almost max HP/ STR and decent mana but only 105-110 max skills should I even consider it or whatever the stats are I shouldn't bother if wrestling is not at least 115 or something like that ?
And same goes with great skills and bad stats.

Today for example i found one that is

Hit Points: 927
Str/Dex/Int: 626 / 125 / 639

But will have only 108 wrest and 109.9 magery once fully trained

Is he a keeper anyway?

If I could I would get them all and hunt with them to see which one I prefer, but I don't have enough stable slots for that. So thank you for all the advices you can give me

While looking for the (almost) perfect GD of my dreams I'm trying to upgrade from the one I have at the moment.

One thing I know is that I won't compromise on the resists, but when I have to choose between 2 good GD, one with good stats and average skills and the other with average stats and good skills, which one is the best choice ?

And which are the min I should accept ?
I mean, if for example I find a GD with almost max HP/ STR and decent mana but only 105-110 max skills should I even consider it or whatever the stats are I shouldn't bother if wrestling is not at least 115 or something like that ?
And same goes with great skills and bad stats.

Today for example i found one that is

Hit Points: 927
Str/Dex/Int: 626 / 125 / 639

But will have only 108 wrest and 109.9 magery once fully trained

Is he a keeper anyway?

If I could I would get them all and hunt with them to see which one I prefer, but I don't have enough stable slots for that. So thank you for all the advices you can give me

Jeza

Click to expand...

You could live with the Magery but that Wrestling is just awful. Depending on resists I would still more than likely toss it.

120 wrestling is important because it dictates how often the dragon hits, as well as how often it gets hit. so in a way, it's a form of melee resist to have high wrestle. you do not want a dragon with any less than 120 wrestle after training. these are bare minimums i listed. everything after that is just gravy.

my current main dragon is trained up to 128.4 wrestle; im not sure if thats max but i know it was 139.x or 140.x wrestle before I tamed it

upgrading dragons will be a continual process throughout the life of your tamer. find something which meets these minimums now, bond it, and then mark runes to all GD spawn spots in tram and fel. recall in whenever you have time, run around invising and loring GDs. when you find a nice one, tame it and upgrade.

I have a real stinker of a GD on one shard where my tamer still needs a lot of work. I was in Destard using bouras to kill regular dragons and wyverns for leather to get the Birds of Britannia talisman when I spotted this GD by the chest room and decided on a whim to tame it, even though I figured it wouldn't tame based on my tamer's skills. After beating it up as much as possible with the two bouras (they died a few times in the process, surprise surprise), I stabled the bouras, used honor (it wasn't even at the follower level), walked back through the gate and started taming. I was shocked but delighted that it tamed on the first try. The RNG gods smiled on me that day. At least now I'd have something to use to farm for something better.

I let the GD bond and then took it out to do some hunting, not expecting it to perform all that well. What I learned was that it really was a pretty awful GD while its skills were low. Trying to kill a Renowned Pixie with it was excruciating. However, once wrestling got over about 117, it started doing much better with killing the Pixie. Kept her pinned in one spot and steadily whittled away at her hit points until she keeled over. No more seeing the pixie's hit points drop and then jump back up another 80-100 points.

Anyway, long story short, below is what that pitiful GD looks like today. I'm not sure I'd try doing a peerless with it, but it definitely seems capable of taking on the renowneds in the Abyss and probably wouldn't have much trouble with most paragons if my tamer can keep up with the vetting and healing.

Current Skills:
121.7 Wrestling (Will go up to 126 with more training.)
106.5 Tactics (This is the max for this GD.)
103.5 Resisting Spells (Will go up to 115 with more training.)
100 Anatomy
119.1 Magery (This is the max for this GD.)
100 Evaluate Intelligence
100 Meditation

838 Hit points
613 Strength / 125 Dex / 652 Intelligence

Current Barding Difficulty: 145.5

Resists (these are soooo sad, poor GD):
63 / 68 / 41 / 57 / 66

This is a GD I know I would have walked away from on another shard where I have pets or friends to help me with farming for a better one. But I'm glad I took a chance at taming and training up this one, in spite of it's horrible resists and less than uber stats. Its relatively high wrestling and magery skills seem to be helping to offset some of its deficiencies. If I ever max out this tamer's stable slots, I just might have a hard time giving up this GD because I expected so little of it and it has surprised me by doing so well.

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